You might also like...

You might also like...

Peter Chiarelli didn’t want to give up on this season.(Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Peter Chiarelli opened his press conference by explaining why he didn’t trade for a defenseman, so it’s not like the GM thought he’d made all the necessary moves at the trade deadline.

Chiarelli explained that the team was better off taking its chances with the depth defensemen the Bruins have — Joe Morrow, Zach Trotman, David Warsofsky – rather than spending big on a player who might not be markedly better.

Prices were high at the deadline and the Bruins aren’t having a great season. As such, Chiarelli didn’t push all his chips in. He made a hockey deal brighten next season’s prospects by getting 22-year-old right wing Brett Connolly from Tampa and he added forward depth with Max Talbot, but he opted against a major move this season.

The Bruins sit in the eighth spot of the Eastern Conference and rental players netted teams like Arizona (Antoine Vermette) and Carolina (Andrej Sekera). Asked if he was tempted to get in on the action and sell, Chiarelli said it a consideration that the B’s didn’t go far with.

“I feel that we have a team that will make the playoffs, and if you can get in, when you get in, anything goes,” he said. “So we talked about it, but I didn’t — we didn’t — really go down that route. In fact, we never went down that route.”

Chiarelli balked at the idea of drastically overpaying for players or moving a first-round pick. In that sense, he showed restraint in not doing something detrimental to the franchise for the sake of just getting into the playoffs.

“I feel that we’ve improved the team, and as I said, I think this is a good group, and some years, you don’t win the Presidents’ Trophy,” Chiarelli said. “Some years, you finish sixth or seventh; some years, you don’t make the playoffs. [It is] incumbent that we make the playoffs – and you have down years for reasons that I won’t get into, but you all know why, sometimes, you don’t, and sometimes, you do. We’ve tried to improve the team, we feel we’ve improved the team, and we hope for a good run coming up.”

In the Bruins’ third and final move Monday, the team swapped AHL forwards with the Wild, as winger Jared Knight was sent to Minnesota for 2011 first-round pick Zack Phillips. The trade was first reported by the Providence Journal’s Mark Divver.

The Bruins and Avalanche traded bottom-six forwards just prior to Monday’s trade deadline, as the B’s sent Jordan Caron and a sixth-round pick to Colorado for Max Talbot and Weymouth native Paul Carey.

According to a source, the deal was struck just prior to Monday’s 3 p.m. cutoff.

According to a source, the deal was struck just prior to Monday’s 3 p.m. cutoff, though it was not yet official, likely due to a wait line for a trade call.

In 11 games for Boston this season, Caron had no points. In 134 career NHL games, all with the Bruins, Caron has 12 goals and 16 assists for 28 points. The most he played in an NHL season came in 2011-12, when he had seven goals and eight helpers for 15 assists in 48 games.

The Bruins drafted Caron with the 25th overall pick of the 2009 draft.

The Bruins lost Craig Cunningham on waivers to Coyotes Monday, a league source confirmed to WEEI.com. The move was first reported by ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun.

Cunningham, who had two goals and an assist for three points in 32 games for Boston this season, was placed on waivers Saturday as the Bruins made room on their roster for potential additions. The team had also waived him prior to the season, with the player going unclaimed.

This marks the second time this season that the Bruins have lost a forward on waivers. Matt Fraser was claimed by the Oilers after the Bruins waived him in December. Fraser has three goals in 21 games for Edmonton since being claimed.

Cunningham is a bigger loss than Fraser was. The gritty, defensively sound forward spent time on Boston’s fourth line this season and appeared to be a clear favorite to center the line next season. Losing him for nothing hurts the Bruins going forward, even if it has minimal impact on this season.

The Bruins originally drafted Cunningham in the fourth round (97th overall) of the 2010 draft. He played three seasons in Providence before splitting time between Providence and Boston this season.